Christian Apologist: Skepticism Caused by Hurt from Church

Christian apologists just can't stand the idea that we skeptics actually have good reasons to not believe their mythology. To them, Christian theology is so obviously true that anyone who doesn't believe must have some other reason. If someone is a non-believer, then they must have been beaten by a nun, molested by a priest, shunned for homosexuality, or hurt in some other dastardly fashion by a Christian or by the church.

It just can't be, they say, that someone actually rejects Christianity itself.

The latest salvo of this nature comes from Christian apologist and author Dr. Alex McFarland, whose new book, 10 Answers for Skeptics, purports to have statistics showing that most skeptics were driven away from their faith by bad experiences. In an interview with the Christian Post, McFarland said,

"Through nearly a year of research and numerous personal interviews, my goal was to really get 'inside the mind of the skeptic.' The most common type of skeptics I meet are wounded skeptics. They have been hurt by church, religion, or by another Christian."

The problem with Dr. McFarland's statement is that like so much of Christian apologetics, it uses flawed logic. McFarland makes the reader think that bad experiences caused the skepticism. More importantly, McFarland seems to think that if you can cure the hurt and heal the damage, the ex-Christian skeptics will all come flooding back to their former faith.

McFarland is implying that skeptics are really Christians in their hearts, and it's only the hurt and their pride that have separated them from God.

This is completely wrong.

These ex-Christian skeptics have had their eyes opened. The hurt they suffered

Amy Winehouse: Rabbi Raises Ugly AA Claims

The tragic death of Amy Winehouse has once made the Alcoholics Anonymous you-need-God myth raise its ugly head once again. It's like a monster that won't die.

You know the myth I'm talking about: the only way to recover from addiction is to turn yourself over to a "higher power." Unfortunately for addicts everywhere, study after study has shown that AA doesn't work, and actually hinders recovery for most people. (I've written about AA before; see Christian Shocker: God-Based AA Program Harms Alcoholics.)

Here's what Rabbi Shais Taub had to say over at Huffington Post:

"In a grim sort of way, the only "news" to me about Amy's death is the date. After all, what really could have stopped this from happening? The only time I have ever seen recovery in a case like Amy's is by an act of God. ... One of the axioms of recovery is that the addict is beyond human aide and that's why addicts need a "higher power" to live. You can call that hocus-pocus. I call it an everyday reality. There is no fact more real to me than the idea that no human power can stand up against the power of addiction."

Except for one thing: Rabbi Taub, you are wrong. Dead wrong. It is not an "axiom." It's a myth that's been

Woman Kuwaiti Politician: Legalize Sex Slaves

This almost needs no comment. It's Salwa Al-Mutairi, a former candidate for the Kuwaiti Parliament.

I asked (a Saudi mufti): What is the law with regard to slave girls?

The mufti told me that this law requires there to a Muslim country raiding a Christian country - sorry, a non-Muslim country - and taking PoWs. I asked him whether it was forbidden (to turn them into slaves), and he said that Islam does not prohibit having slave girls. On the contrary.

The law pertaining to slave girls is not the same as for free women. Free women must cover their bodies, except for their hands and faces. The slave girl must cover up from the bellybutton down. There is a big difference between slave girls and free women. With a free woman, the man must make a marriage contract, but with a slave girl - all he has to do is buy her. It's as if he married her. So there's a difference between slave girls and free women.

Here in Kuwait too, I asked religious scholars and experts about this, and they said that for the average, good religious man, the only way to avoid forbidden relations with women is to purchase slave girls.

I very much hope that such a law is legislated. Just like they allow servants, they should allow slave girls, and legislate a proper law in this regard. We don't want our children to fall into the abyss of fornication and similar filth, God forbid. Allah willing, things will work out.

There are countries like Chechnya, which are at war with another country. In such a case, there must be PoWs, so why not go and buy those prisoners? Is it better for them to be slaughtered over there? Go and buy them, and sell them to traders here in Kuwait.

One has to wonder: what goes on in this woman's house and in her mosque? What have the men in her life done to her? Does she really think that men are such animals that they need a stable of

Piss off the Christians: Live Forever

What's the best way to cure the world of religion? Cure it of death first!

Have you ever considered what would happen to religion if death was no longer a certainty? Or if death became unusual? There are many reasons people believe in gods and an afterlife, but death is by far the most powerful. The thought that you cease to exist is unsettling to most people, and religions have provided an alternative.

So what will happen to all of those fire-and-brimstone preachers when death is defeated?

According to Aubrey de Grey, the first person to live to 150 is probably already alive today ... and it could be you or me. And according to Dr. de Grey, the children being born today may live to be 1000 years old or more ... possibly forever.

The Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence Foundation (SENS), where de Grey is the chief science officer, is dedicated to "curing" aging. Scientists originally hoped to find an "aging gene" that could be turned off. That would have been simple given our modern understanding of genetics. But it turns out that aging has many components, each of which has to be independently solved. The initial optimism for a quick solution has turned into a long-term research effort.

But now there is real progress. With the incredible recent advances in genetics, drug design, biology, chemistry, computers and diagnostic instruments, hope is growing rapidly. Immortality is within reach.

The only question remaining is, "When?" Will I live to 150 or even longer? Or will it be my

Jews Erase Hillary Clinton from Iconic Situation-Room Photo

Are any of you modern women thinking maybe conservative Judaism is for your? Check out this story.

The ultra-orthodox publication Di Tzeitung took the famous photo of President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and their advisors, and erased Secretary Clinton and another woman from the photo! They claim that modesty prevents them from publishing pictures of women.

But wait ... isn't that censorship? Isn't that revising history? There were two women in the room. What sort of paper alters the facts when reporting a story? Oh, wait ... this is religion. I forgot, they alter facts all the time!

Christianity Dying Faster Than Expected?

America's churches seem to be under siege and losing ground faster than anyone expected. This week was particularly bad: Christian news web sites are full of economic disaster stories right alongside stories about young people leaving churches in droves.

Here is just a sample of the top headlines at one Christian news site this morning:

• Crystal Cathedral vendors and what they're owed
• Megachurch Crystal Cathedral Ministries seeks bankruptcy protection
• Top 400 charities see billions less in donations
• Walking away from church ["...conservative politics is a turnoff to more and more young adults"]

These seem to be reflecting a theme that's getting stronger.

City of Angels: Why is Christian Philosophy so Negative?

We watched an old Meg Ryan / Nicolas Cage movie last night called City of Angels. It was a decent romantic tragedy, though a bit slow moving. But it got me to wondering: why is Christian philosophy so profoundly negative? Why does happiness always come at a terrible price? Why is love a zero-sum game where if someone wins, someone else has to lose?

(Spoiler alert!) In City of Angels, Nicolas Cage plays Seth, an angel who watches over the good citizens of Los Angeles. Meg Ryan plays a heart surgeon (Dr. Maggie Rice) who is having a personal crisis over the fact that some of her patients die. Since Seth is an angel, he doesn't have human senses like touch, taste or smell. To make a long (literally) movie short, Seth falls in love with Maggie, discovers that angels can "fall to Earth" and become human, and so he gives up his immortality for love. After a good dose of reality (cuts, bruises, rain and getting robbed), he gets to spend one blissful night with Meg Ryan before she is hit by a truck and killed.

I totally don't get this. This is one of the weirdest things about Christianity: whenever something good happens, it has to be balanced by something tragic.

Seth the angel is immortal and he loves saving people from danger and comforting them when they die. He gets to hear the choir of Angels in the sunrise every morning. But God has given humans the greatest gift of all. Seth is denied the pleasures of touch, taste and smell. He can't feel a caress,

The Scandal of Atheism

Atheists are facing a grave scandal today that threatens the very roots of atheism.

It is almost identical to the one that enveloped philosophy itself around the end of the nineteenth century. Back in the early 1900s, the question was this: How do I know that you really exist? Maybe you're just a dream of mine, maybe the whole world is a dream. I claim the external world doesn't exist. You say you're real, not just my dream? Prove it!

And so you try ... and it turns out to be impossible. No matter what you say, I can counter by pointing out that in my dream, that's what you'd be likely to say, that it's just my own mind dreaming up answers to my questions.

To most people, it seems like a silly question, but philosophers were very perplexed. Immanuel Kant famously called it "the scandal of philosophy" that philosophers couldn't even prove the existence of the external world.

But the great philosopher Martin Heidegger saw this "scandal" for what it was: a made-up problem. He famously wrote:

The 'scandal of philosophy' is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again.

Heidegger's view was that the question was essentially useless (not his words, but that's the idea) – one can make up all sorts of impossible questions, and the only scandal is when you take them seriously and waste whole careers, decades and centuries trying to find answers.

Atheism faces an almost identical scandal today. We've been sucked into a silly argument that has no answer,

Atheism IS where morality originates

One of the claims of theists that really bugs me is that morality comes from God. No, actually its worse than that. Theists claim that morality can only come from God, and they go on to suggest that without religion, the world will devolve into an amoral chaos of murder, thievery and rape.

And to add insult to the equation, theists claim that whatever morality atheists have is borrowed from religion! They assert that we atheists grew up immersed in a Christian, Jewish and Islamic culture and so we absorbed their morality. Atheists, they claim, are sort of unwitting Christians, Jews and Muslims when it comes to morals.

Its time to turn the theistic argument on its head and show why exactly the opposite is true. The fact is that theists have stolen their morals from human nature. They claim morals come from God, but in fact humans merely put the words in his mouth. The real origin of morality is in our evolutionary heritage.

The truth is, both God and morality are made-up human concepts. We made God in our own image and then we imbued him with our own natural understanding of right and wrong.

When it comes to morality, theists are nothing more than plagiarizers, stealing and giving no credit to the original.

You can easily see this by just educating yourself. Take any freshman college course in cultural anthropology and you'll learn two things:

Ha Ha! New Noah's Ark Age Proved with CARBON DATING

I love this stuff. Reality deniers, also known as Creationists, have for decades been refuting the scientific data about the age of the earth. Since some of the strongest data comes from radiometric data – the radioactive decay of various elements – they long ago "proved" that radiometric dating techniques are all wrong. Useless.

After all, if carbon dating says a frozen mastodon carcass is 20,000 years old, it must be the test that's wrong, since we know the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

That's why I gave a big hoot the other day when I read about the latest claim that Noah's Ark was found.

Yeung said he filmed inside the structure for about an hour. He brought back samples that were later tested in Iran.

They say the wood has been tested and carbon dates to around the time Noah was afloat.

Got that? Carbon dating.

Is the Collective Republican IQ Really This Low?

Here's a rather frightening poll. If these statistics are true, the Republican party should be ashamed of itself. Either that, or else the collective IQ of the Republican Party is so abysmal it's not smart enough to be ashamed. According to a new poll:

• 57% of Republicans still believe Obama is a Muslim. (Ironic, given that he actually may be a closet atheist.)
• 45% of Republicans still believe Obama wasn't born in the United States, even though the State of Hawaii produced his official birth certificate, and a notice of his birth was published in the newspaper.

You think those numbers are scary? There's one more:

• 24% of Republicans think Obama is the antichrist. (Do they even know what an antichrist is?)

I think I'm in the wrong line of work. Spreading truth and wisdom is such an uphill battle, maybe I should give up and instead just spread drivel that people want to believe. It's so much easier.

How can people believe this utter nonsense in the face of clear and compelling facts?

I'd be willing to bet that the the fraction of Republicans who believe this drivel are the same ones who were raised in fundamentalist, evangelical churches.

Luck Versus Religion: I'll Take Luck Any Day

One of the truly damaging aspects of religion is that takes away our pride and belittles our accomplishments. God gets all the credit, we get all the blame.

I was contemplating in bed this morning, enjoying a lazy morning, thinking about how I should be in here blogging, but instead watching the sunrise, talking lazily, listening to the birds singing their springtime songs, and enjoying the beautiful lagoon out my window with the beach and ocean in the distance.

A religious person might wake up on a beautiful day like this and say, "God has been good to me," with an undercurrent of, "... even though I'm an undeserving sinner." That's sick. It takes away our pride in our accomplishments. Even on the very best days of our lives, religion (especially Christianity) tries to knock us down, tell us we're flawed sinners, and convince us that in spite of our awfulness, God has begrudged us a nice day.

Did Sex Create the Christmas Bomber?

Did Islam's unnatural and unhealthy teachings about sex turn a normal young Nigerian into a murderer and terrorist? Did a healthy young man's lust get twisted into self revulsion and hate?

NPR is doing a fascinating three-day in-depth biography of Farouk Abdulmutallab, the "Christmas Bomber" who hid bomb ingredients in his underwear and tried to blow up an airplane. And once again, I was struck by how truly perverse some religious beliefs are, especially regarding sex.

"I think this loneliness leads me to other problems. As I get lonely, the natural sex drive awakens and I struggle to control it – sometimes leading to minor sinful activities, like not lowering the gaze [around unveiled women]. ... This problem makes me want to get married to avoid getting aroused. The Prophet advised young men to fast if they can't get married, but it has not been helping me much..." – Farouk Abdulmutallab

Boycott Mel Gibson

As if to top his own worst moment, Mel Gibson (or is that Gibbon? No, monkeys have more dignity...) is being a jerk again. It's time for everyone to boycott Mel Gibson, particularly his new film (The Edge of Darkness) coming out this week. It's time to send a message to the money people in Hollywood, to tell them that hate speech, hypocrisy and discrimination are bad business, that these actions have consequences, and that decent people of all religions or no religion won't tolerate Gibson's behavior.

He's been a jerk before, and now the trend continues. In a disgusting interview (here's the video), he won't even take responsibility for his own actions. As the reporter says, Gibson has never actually apologized in a meaningful way for his anti-Semitic remarks, and his weird religious views, combined with his hypocrisy, are offensive to just about everyone.

We all make mistakes, but the true test of a moral person is admitting it, and trying to make it right. I'd actually have more respect for him if he just came out and said he hates Jews. By worming away from these accusations (but note the failure to deny them, which speaks louder than words...), Gibson not only looks guilty of anti-Semitism, but also looks like a weasely coward.

There are lots of other good movies. Go see Avatar again! But skip Gibson's new one.

Christians go Nuts: Bible Says God Did NOT Create Universe!

What happens when you insist that the Bible be taken literally ... and it turns out there is a big mistake in the translation? For example, what if the original doesn't say God created Heaven and Earth?

Oops.

It's a perfect example of what happens when you let irrational faith trump scholarship and rationality: every time a new fact comes along, your defense of your beliefs has to get even more contorted and far-fetched than before.

According to Professor Ellen van Wolde, the story of Genesis was mistranslated, and badly. God didn't create the universe, it was here already. He just sorted it all out and made sense of it. Sorting out the heavens and firmament, and the waters from the land, and so on, would be a mighty task, one worthy of any ordinary god. But it's a far cry from creating the universe itself ex nihlo.

If Professor van Wolde is right, it puts Yahweh in the same league as gods like Thor, Zeus and Baal: mighty gods, but of-this-universe rather than creator of the universe. Instead of being omniscient and omnipotent, Yahweh would just be more like an ultra-magical human. Quite a downfall.

While this academic debate over a single Hebrew word is interesting and amusing, it's the reaction of Christians and Jews that I find far more instructive, and sad. Professor Van Wolde's short thesis has spawned hundreds of replies on the newspaper's web site, and some of them fill pages with their arguments.

To a scholar, this sort of thing is fun and fascinating, and the debate is just part of an ongoing, somewhat esoteric, effort to expand knowledge. If this were any book other than the Bible, it would be left in the dry, dusty attics of just a few linguists and historians.

But because it affects one of the core beliefs of conservative Christians and Jews, it has to be refuted. Never mind that in a scholarly debate, everyone might eventually conclude that the professor is right (or not ... that's what scholarship is about). No matter what the facts are, these conservative Christians and Jews have to concoct dozens of reasons why the experts must be wrong.

The refutations fall into three main camps:

1. Professor van Wolde's translation is wrong (this from people who don't even speak Hebrew).
2. The word "separate" can be taken to mean "create."
3. The original Hebrew is irrelevant, because the Bible is God's inerrant word and the current translation is His divine will.

Yikes.

A few months ago, I wrote a blog that is relevant again:

There is no objective truth for religion, no foundation. When religious people argue, they're arguing about opinion, and they can argue forever. But when scientists argue, it's over facts, and sooner or later, the facts prevail. One theory will win out because it is true, and the others will be forgotten. And the scientists will then move on to the next question, to expand our knowledge even more.

That's the beauty of true scholarship, that ultimately, through hard work and clear thinking, and by ignoring our own wishes about what we'd like to be true, we find a core truth that everyone can verify for him/herself. And we move on to the next question.

Religion's reliance on faith, and belief in things that can't possibly be true, makes it impossible to move forward. People waste days, years, and even whole lifetimes, concocting silly explanations to justify two-thousand-year-old mythology, simply because some priests or rabbis declared it to be from Yahweh's own mouth. It's a terrible waste of human intelligence.

Will Immortality piss off God?

So, birthday. Fifty six – is my life half over? What are the chances I'll live to be 112 years old? Oy.

I had this weird thought. We, you and I, are all in a peculiar spot: we don't know if we'll ever die at all. It is conceivable that, before I die, scientists will discover the secrets to biological immortality. In fact, it's almost impossible that science won't someday achieve immortality for humans. Maybe not in my lifetime, but certainly within 100 to 500 years.

So what happens to Heaven and Hell when people stop dying? Seriously, this will be a real problem for the the Big Three, the Abrahamic religions. Christians, Jews and Muslims all rely on that life-after-death concept to keep believers in line, and as a sort of antidote for all of the trouble that we find here on Earth.

Life sucks? Don't worry, you'll get your reward. Saddam Hussein killed a couple hundred thousand of the Iraqi people? No problem, he's going to suffer forever in Hell.

The Heaven and Hell memes bring a balance into people's lives. They're very comforting, and assure people that, in spite of the apparent unfairness of life caused by government, society and "acts of God," everything will be smoothed over in the end.

But what happens when nobody dies? This is going to be a huge theological problem for Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

I'll make a wager, any amount of money you like, that when the day arrives that science defeats old age, religious leaders will declare that it's a sin, that it violates God's design for us. I'll even bet that it will be taken as yet another sign of the approaching Armageddon.

Of course, I can only pay up if I live that long...

If I knew I'd live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.
– Mickey Mantle (American baseball player)

For those of you interested in reading more about immortality, I'm not the only one who thinks we may live forever. Raymond Kurzweil even wrote a book about this immortality, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. He claims that if we can manage to live long enough (like, to 120), science will have cured most or all diseases and even conquered old age itself. And it's actually not an unreasonable claim. I fully expect to live to 100 just by taking care of myself.

American Home Grown Terrorists - Islamic Roots

Among atheist bloggers, I'm a misfit: I don't believe religion is the root of all war. Atheists tend to blame religion for most of the world's evils, especially war, but not me. I believe wars are really about power and money, not religion, and that religion is merely used cynically by military leaders and dictators to achieve their ends. It's a tool, not a cause.

But with the rise of a new brand of home-grown American terrorists, it's hard to see how religion, Islam in particular, can escape the blame.

These new terrorists are Americans who have taken up the radical Islamic calling, and hope to kill Americans using terrorist tactics. (I, along with the vast majority of Muslims, am very careful to distinguish between mainstream Islam and radicals, just as I don't lump all Christians in with the likes of McVeigh).

These are not desperate young men with no future who were recruited by the Taliban, nor are they well-educated middle-class Saudis fighting colonialism (i.e. the 9/11 terrorists). These new American terrorists are ordinary young men who have been seduced by religion into a life of crime and terrorism.

It's hard to see how religion can escape the blame for this new brand of home-grown terrorism. The holy texts of all three Abrahamic religions have so many conflicting, confusing, and ambiguous passages that anyone can interpret them to justify anything. Combine that with the idea that God is on your side, and it's easy to justify mass murder. Not right, but easy.

Without religion, these young men (and it's almost always men) would probably be radicals, malcontents, and other types of societal misfits, but they wouldn't be mass murders. It takes religion to turn a malcontent into a terrorist.

New Saudi University Torpedoed by Islam?

Conservative Islam is once again showing that it is the enemy of knowledge.

This morning's National Public Radio had a wonderful report about the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). With one of the largest endowments in the world, a whopping $10 billion, KAUST promises to bring education and technological diversity to a country that is highly dependent on oil. Although the Saudi royal family is known for its heavy-handed rule, in this instance there is no doubt that King Abdullah was truly looking to modernize his country, to help foster a strong technology base that will outlast his country's oil supply. He saw that education, not money, is the key to the future.

The university opened with great fanfare and excitement, with journalists from all over the world reporting on this exciting new opportunity. Then, perhaps inevitably, religious obstructionism set in, in the form of a popular Islamic cleric, Sheikh Saad al Shethri.

The Sheikh declared that men and women shouldn't study together, that was unacceptable. Moreover, ideas like Evolution are irregular and alien, and shouldn't be taught. And to try to prevent the University from ever making real progress in educating young Saudis, the Sheikh decided that religious "scholars" should review the University's curriculum, to ensure that it doesn't contradict the Qur'an.

The good news is that Sheikh Saad al Shethri didn't get his way. He was widely criticized in the press, and was fired from his job on an advisory panel to the King. But he was able to keep his teaching job at an Islamic university, and his words have sparked a battle between reformists and conservatives in the country. His actions caused significant damage to the open flow of ideas and knowledge in Saudi Arabia. Where once journalists were free to visit KAUST and report on this amazing new center of education, they are now banned, and the University is trying to keep a low profile while the storm rages. Who knows what damage this obstructionist cleric's opinions might bring?

Conservative religions are justifiably afraid of progress. They rely on ignorance, they teach a "world history" that is just plain wrong, and their morals and laws are outdated by several thousand years. If we lived by their idea of progress, we'd still be wandering in the deserts and watching our children die of starvation and disease.

They know all too well the dangers of education: Their beliefs don't stand up in the face of real knowledge.

So we should expect this sort of behavior from conservative Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, whenever real knowledge is being taught. It's up to more reasonable people to push forward anyway, to fight to keep humanity moving forward.

Religion Afraid of an Honest Debate?

There's a new twist in the atheism debate: It's being taken seriously! That might be good news, but alas no. Instead of debating atheism on its merits, it seems far too many religious writers prefer to use smear tactics and character assassination.

The biggest insult in a debate is when nobody even cares enough to debate you. In years past, you almost never heard any theist seriously attack the atheist position; it just wasn't necessary. Religious people were confident in their position, and atheists were mostly dismissed as unimportant. So I guess it's good news that atheists are raising the hackles of religious columnists and commentators everywhere. At least atheism isn't being completely ignored.

But the theists, rather than address atheist's position in an honest debate, are resorting to rhetoric and innuendo. Go to Google, click on "News" at the top, and search for "atheist" and you'll see what I mean. Here is a small sampling of the sort of name calling that's being used to avoid the real debate:

• The tedious 'new' atheism
• Atheism has become a religion of its own
• A plague of atheists has descended, and Catholics are the target

The last article above (the "plague of atheists") is particularly noteworthy because it was written by a respected scholar at a major Christian university in Australia and published by the Sydney Morning Herald. It is rather stunning in its lack of polish, and amounts to nothing more than name calling and mudslinging. It's really rather alarming that a Christian scholar can't do better.

Every dishonest trick and maneuver known to politics and marketing is being used. You'll find personal attacks, name calling, and phrases like "tiresome" and "nothing new." Atheists are being called by disparaging titles such as "militant" or "brigade," in an attempt to paint the entire group as radicals out to demolish the poor, honest theists who are just minding their own business.

What's missing from most of these responses is any rational, thoughtful answers to the questions atheists are posing.

It doesn't speak well for the theist position that they can't address the debate honestly. Are their beliefs so weak that they can't stand scrutiny? Are their arguments so flawed that they're embarrassed to present them? Is their position so tenuous that they dare not even show it?

Religion: Can't Stand the Heat?

A couple years ago some good friends were visiting, and in the middle of a conversation about health, the wife injected her religious beliefs about medical procedures into the conversation ... and the conversation stopped. Nobody knew what to say. As a scientific-type guy, I knew her assertion was simply wrong, and had been proved wrong by scientific experiments. But as a polite host, I couldn't exactly say, "No, your religion is mistaken about that, your beliefs are false."

When religion comes up in social situations, it's as though you're in a boxing ring, and just before the first round, the ref tells you, "Oh, by the way, you can't hit your opponent, you might hurt him!" And just as you are replying that a good honest boxing match is pretty much why you're here, the bell rings and the fight starts...

That's the position many agnostics and atheists face any time they try to have an open, fair and honest debate with theists. For some reason, it's considered a huge faux pas to challenge them outright, to tell someone that you believe their religion is simply wrong. It's like being in a boxing match where you're prohibited from landing a punch.

Why is this? Why is it OK to tell someone their political beliefs are misguided, or that their sports team is a bunch of losers, or that your town is better than their town, but you're not allowed to say anything bad about their religion?

Most of our beliefs are fair game for a good argument. Intelligent people like to debate, and among friends it's not considered bad manners to challenge one another, even sometimes vigorously. It's part of what makes modern democracies work so well, and of what makes life interesting.

But not religions. They're off limits. You'd have no problem telling a good friend, "Your Republican President started a cruel war," or, "Your Democratic President was immoral!" But tell a Christian, "Your God started a cruel war," or "You Catholics have immoral priests," and suddenly you are the pariah. Not God, or the Catholic priests, but you.

It's really an unfortunate and inappropriate "get out of jail free" card for religions. Legally, they can hide behind "separation of church and state." (See my recent blogs about scientology and Catholic priests.) Financially, they're non-profit corporations, but they're trying to change the law that bans non-profits from politics. And socially, they have this "special protection" that holds them to a different standard of criticism than any other topic.

We shouldn't fall for this. Your religious beliefs and mine should be just as valid a topic for dinnertime debate as the next election or the Superbowl.